assignment 2

assignment 2

Blog 11- sustainable development metrics

Blog 11- sustainable development metrics

 

Metrics are usually a way of measuring something. In the case of sustainable development it is very hard to make an accurate measurement of it. This can be seen clearly when we try to define sustainable development as each sector has a different definition for it.

From an economic point of view, more students in university mean more cars on the road and more paper usage. However it should mean more E- learning and more public transport.

We learnt to distinguish between strong and weak sustainability.

Weak sustainability means that natural goods and services can be replaced by manufactured goods and services as long as it is of equal value. The problem with this is that it is hard to measure the natural goods and services in a way that can be compared to the man-made type. For example you can make this comparison easily if you assume that an entire forest is being used for furniture etc. however it does not take into account the value of the forest for wildlife or for hikers etc.

Also some natural material cannot be replaced by manufactured goods and services. A river that is used for fishing is a prime example as once this is depleted; it cannot be replaced, unless it is used in a way that it is allowed to replenish itself.

Strong sustainability means that natural materials and services can’t be replaced by the manufactured counterparts. An example of this is the ozone layer. Once this is depleted my human means it cannot be replaced by man-made devices.

 

Darfur war was fought because of climate change. It resulted in famines and droughts as resources were very scarce in this landscape. It is the first time a war was fought over this. The population in this country are mainly a tribal people and this is one reason why there was a struggle for resources as they had not built a sustainable platform on which to obtain the necessary resources i.e. food and water, so the next best thing was to take them off other tribes.

 

The Incinerator in Meath took 10 years for planning permission to go through due to various environmental objections. If a Waste management scheme was implemented then the matter could have been addressed much quicker. Also it would have eliminated the need for an incinerator which would have saved on carbon dioxide emissions.

 In some countries, there are increasing amounts of crops being grown for use as bio fuels instead of food production. This causes a rise in food prices and in turn this causes famine in other parts of the world.

These are examples of events that could have been prevented if sustainable measures had been used.

We can use biosphere resources, i.e. fish, timber, soil, water, oil faster than they can regenerate and faster than our waste products can be assimilated. Eventually they will run out and we will have disastrous consequences which may come in the form of natural disasters i.e. famine, severe flooding.

A large amount of land is unproductive on the earth, for example deserts or the barren tundra in the northern hemisphere. However, the Sahara may become very important in terms of food production in the future. There are many groundwater deposits under the desert which are currently being tapped into to meet the agricultural needs the oil industry and the general population. However it must be used in a way that the ground water doesn’t run out leaving the land in the desert condition it was once in.

 

 

 

We measure the amount of the earth available to each person as global hectares (gha). At the moment there is 1.8 gha available for each person. However at the current standard of living the EU uses 4.8gha per person. This is way above what it should be. For all people in the world to live to the standards of the EU population we would need 2.5 planets. On top of this the US uses 9.6gha per person. It is clear that if this is continued, the earth will exhaust itself quite soon.

Also it is found that the developed world uses $7000 per person/year- how can we continue to live this lifestyle?

Blog 10- Responsible Production and Consumption

Blog 10- Responsible Production and Consumption

During the week, we were given an interesting statistic that the wealthiest 20% of the world’s population consumes 76.6% of the world’s resources and the poorest 20% consume only 1.5% of the world’s resources. This show an extreme inequality in the world today.

However, on the happiness index the poorer countries seem to rate higher than the rich countries. Why is this? The conclusion we came to was that excess choice seems to be the main factor in this rating. With a decrease in happiness levels comes an increase in anxiety levels. This is due to concerns about our importance, our achievements and income levels. Nowadays our image is highest on our list of priorities. Another fact we learnt was that 1 new product appears on a shop shelf each day. One product is removed from the shop shelf every 3 days. It is clear that we do not need this amount of products being made available to us, yet why do we still go through the stress of trying to decide which one to buy? Even when we make these difficult decisions we are still dissatisfied. We wonder if we should have made a different decision!  The countries that do not have this choice live much simpler and stress free lives, and ultimately are much happier.

http://www.happyplanetindex.org/explore/global/index.html

This is a link to the happy planet index where Irelands rating is 42.6.

Another important thing we learnt was that people don’t always need products, just the end result that the product gives them.  For example, if someone was cold, they don’t need to turn on a heater to make themselves warm. They could simply put on more clothes or get a blanket. We discussed different ways of washing clothes in groups in class. While trying to think of less impactful ways of doing this we realised that often clothes are washed when they don’t need to be! If there was only a small stain on it, a spray could be used to clean it instead of using a washing machine. This would save on electricity as well as water that is used in the washing machine. Another idea was to design clothes that do not stain very easily. We could also use big washing centres instead of owning our own individual washing machines. That way, it would mean people would wait until they have a full load of washing to be done before they wash the clothes. It is clear that there are alternate ways of doing these things and we must think about the most environmentally friendly way of doing it.

blog 9 Corporate Social Responsibility

Blog 9- Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

The European Commission defines CSR as:

“A concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and a cleaner environment, a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis.”

CSR is often referred to as soft law, that is, it is not compulsory to do it but it looks good to customers and would improve the image of the business and increase sales. However, there is no penalty for not being socially responsible. This is unfair for business who make an effort to be responsible to society.

Toyota Ireland supports the ECO-UNESCO ‘Clubs in action’ programme. This programme gives clubs the opportunity to apply for seed grants to carry out a day long or weekend activity to raise awareness about an environmental issue in their local area. Successful Clubs also have the opportunity to link in with their local Toyota dealerships. Clubs submit a project proposal in one of 6 categories including; local clean up, tree planting, energy saving, ECO-transport, recycling or other environmental awareness raising activities. Bronze, Silver and Gold seed grants of up to 1000euro are awarded to successful clubs in accordance to their budget.

This is a link to the ISO 26000;

http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=ISO+26000%3a2010&source=msn&adgroup=social

It is an international standard of CSR and is intended to provide organisations with guidance concerning social responsibility and can be used as part of public policy activities.

An example of bad publicity from bad CSR in use and the effect that bad social responsibility has on a company is Enron, the Texan energy company who brought down itself along with one of the largest accounting firms at the time, Arthur Anderson. In 2001, Enron collapsed under massive debts after it was revealed that Jeffrey Skilling, who was jailed for 24 years, had orchestrated a giant fraud and a massive corporate ethics scandal. Corporate social responsibility articles pounced on Enron and publicized the backlash. As Joel Bakan wrote in The Corporation, “Enron’s story suggests at a minimum that scepticism about corporate social responsibility is well warranted.” Indeed, Enron never quite recovered from the bad publicity as its supposed socially responsible activities became irrelevant since its very existence proved to be a sham.

It is clear that CSR is now being recognised as a necessity in business dealings in todays society.

Blog 8- EU law and policy development

Blog 8- EU law and policy development

I found this week’s topic very interesting as we learned how decisions are made within the European Union. However, upon learning this, the question arises: is this a true practice of democracy? It appears that when decisions have to be made, the larger member states will more than likely get the decision in their favour. This is because the amount of votes each country has to use is a percentage of its population in relation to the total population in Europe. As the voting goes in the council of the European Union Ireland gets 7 votes out of 345 while the bigger countries such as Germany get 29 votes. It is clear that Ireland is a minority in this situation and that if it were to disagree on something that the bigger countries such as Germany it would probably make no difference to a decision.

Another topic we spoke about was precautionary and preventive principles for pollution and the fact that the polluter should pay. We split into groups and my group focused on the area of septic tanks. The government will enforce a registration charge of fifty euro for the septic tank and a reasonable inspection scheme will be introduced. However as these matters were and still are being discussed in the government, the public were being left in the dark. The extent of the type of inspections that would take place and the standards that would have to be upheld were not published for any affected parties to see.

 

The Enniscorthy guardian paper in Wexford reveals http://www.enniscorthyguardian.ie/news/new-septic-tank-regulations-3018880.html

Now the regulations have changed to only one in ten septic tanks being inspected. And the tanks to be inspected will be high risk ones i.e. tanks based around rivers, lakes or streams. According to the minister for the environment phil Hogan, who had been negotiating with the European commission in 2011 and 2012 to minimise the impact of new septic tank regulations, he inherited the situation where the proposals were that every septic tank was going to be inspected. He said that complying with the environmental protection agency standards of 2009 would simply fail. He says that a once off registration fee with no annual inspection charges and a risk based inspection method will be the best compromise for this situation. This brings in our principles of precautionary and preventative methods of tackling this problem. Also it includes the polluter should pay as if an inspected tank was leaking, the owner would receive a fine.

blog 7 economics

Blog 7 – economics

This week we spoke about economics and its effect on the environment.

One highly controversial topic that we discussed is the pollution haven hypothesis.

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/aml6/pdfs&zips/pollutionhavens.pdf

This is the theory that companies that cause a lot of pollution are moving to areas that are less strict on pollution. This saves the business the expense in trying to reduce pollution and allows them to avoid fines they would get in other areas. In fact some countries would set their standards of pollution law lower than other countries in order to attract certain firms to set up in their country. It is normally developing countries that act in this way. Countries have to pay fines if their pollution is above a certain limit… Developed countries buy credits off developing countries so that they stay under this limit. The developing countries have a low level of pollution anyway so this works out nicely. But then as they try to develop further, these pollution boundaries slow their progress. They easiest and fastest way they can develop is to use raw materials as every other country that is now developed used. This is unsustainable and bad for the environment, but is it fair to stop countries developing in this way, when developed countries did the same thing in their early life? It will mean these countries sacrificing economic growth and development in order to preserve the environment. One argument that may arise to support the pollution haven hypothesis is the environment Kuznets curve.

http://images.wikia.com/green/images/e/e2/EKC.jpg

this curve show that in the early stages of development, with the average income rising from a low level, the environmental degradation increases. However, at a certain stage of economic growth and at a certain level of income the pollution ceases to increase and subsequently decreases.  This give reassurance to the companies who wish to set up in developing countries but i fear that while the pollution may decrease after a certain amount of time irreversible damage may already be done on the environment.

The developed nations have a responsibility to developing countries to ensure that they develop in a way that does not harm the environment. They must also ensure they don’t hold them back from developing to their full potential.

blog 6 food

In this week’s lectures we talked about food production and the energy that goes into producing it. Our lecturer, Con Tras, who owns an apple orchard gave us fairly accurate figures as to how much energy was used in making apples. Fertilizers, storage buildings and machinery are all needed for the production of apples in this orchard. All these items use up energy and emit carbon dioxide into the air. 24555MJ of energy are used in the production of apples in Ireland every year, and this is before packaging etc. there are almost 590kgs of carbon dioxide emissions during this production per hectare. And these orchards are usually huge areas of land e.g. 50 or 60 hectares. When these figures are added up we can see that this may have a large effect on the environment.

Another topic we spoke about during the week was genetically modified crops or GM crops.

 

http://www.itmonline.org/image/gmo3.jpg – this is an image of the amount of gm crops produced in some countries as a percentage of their total production amount.

 Genetic modification involves the insertion or deletion of genes. It is then possible to make these crops resistant to certain diseases etc that they would normally be very prone to attracting. It also allows for crops to be grown out of season e.g. potatoes. One fear that some people have is that the GM traits of pesticide resistance may transfer over to other plants if they cross breed. This may give rise to some weeds who develop pesticide resistant characteristics. There is also a possibility that certain foods such as peanuts which already have allergen causing tendencies may become several times worse, or that new allergens may be caused. The major argument in favour of GM products is that due to the increased yield and their resistance to disease they would most likely be the solution to food shortages and famines.